Julie Sommerlund is head of education and an associate professor in aesthetic communication, branding and marketing at The Danish Design School. At The Danish Design School she is also associated with the fashion consortium MOKO.
 
Julie Sommerlund studies fashion and the fashion industry. In her research project Mediating Fashion she focuses on the interactions among the various participants in the field, including designers, manufacturers, fashion writers, retailers and all the practical and technical staff that are involved, for example, in staging a fashion fair. The wide diversity of connections in the industry is characterised by a flow of aesthetic communication, not only in the form of deliberately framed messages from one sender to one or more recipients, as when products are presented in fashion shows or PR-materials. Aesthetic communication is also occurring when companies pick mannequins for a trade fair, when the products are packaged and transported, in trade/retail situations, when the models try on the clothes, etc.

Aesthetic communication is essential for the operation of the fashion industry, and for people in the business it is often based on intuitive knowledge. One of Julie Sommerlund’s objectives with Mediating Fashion is to gather and articulate some of the intuitive knowledge about best practices (what works best, when and how) to be able to convey and develop this knowledge, also in a theoretical sense. Julie Sommerlund combines aesthetic analysis with industry studies, and an important part of the project is studies of daily practices for example in modelling and ad agencies, fashion journals, fashion shows, etc.

Julie Sommerlund is also interested in science and technology studies (studies of specific sciences and technologies through sociological methods). She is particularly interested in the sociology of expectations (the study of the effects of human expectations). Julie Sommerlund has no ambitions of being able to tell the future; her focus is on the effect of predictions and expectations of the future on our current taste, assessments and choices – and thus the development of practice and aesthetics.

Sociology of art and design is another of Julie Sommerlund’s fields of interest within science and technology studies. In this field, she helps bridge the gaps between the research traditions in the fields of sociology and aesthetics.

Julie Sommerlund has an M.A. in modern culture and culture communication from the University of Copenhagen and a Ph.D. from the Copenhagen Business School.